Page:Embarrassments (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1897).djvu/220

208 and Ray Limbert flourished the happiest relation, the only cloud on which was that her husband eyed him rather askance. When he was called clever this personage wanted to know what he had to "show;" and it was certain that he showed nothing that could compare with Jane Highmore. Mr. Highmore took his stand on accomplished work and, turning up his coat-tails, warmed his rear with a good conscience at the neat bookcase in which the generations of triplets were chronologically arranged. The harmony between his companions rested on the fact that, as I have already hinted, each would have liked so much to be the other. Limbert couldn't but have a feeling about a woman who in addition to being the best creature and her sister's backer would have made, could she have condescended, such a success with the Beacon. On the other hand Mrs. Highmore used freely to say: "Do you know, he'll do exactly the thing that I want to do? I shall never do it myself, but he'll do it instead. Yes, he'll do my thing, and I shall hate him for it—the wretch. " Hating him was her pleasant humour, for the wretch was personally to her taste.

She prevailed on her own publisher to promise